Under the Indian’s critical eye, Matt shaved down the branch, paring off the thinnest possible shavings.

Elizabeth George Speare -- The Sign of the Beaver

Show more

"I’m leaving tomorrow for a sales conference in Portland," Mr. Powell explained, peeling an onion over the sink with a small paring knife.

R.L. Stine -- Goosebumps - Night of the Living Dummy

Jab him with the paring knife?

Anthony Doerr -- All the Light We Cannot See

The paring knife she uses is worn so thin its blade is barely more than a crescent moon sliver.

Margaret Atwood -- Cat’s Eye

With a faint smile, Branna plied her paring knife.

Nora Roberts -- Dark Witch

At her suggestion, I pare off my nails with a knife.

Suzanne Collins -- Mockingjay

Mrs. Wainwright took a paring knife from her apron pocket and slipped it under the mattress.

John Steinbeck -- The Grapes of Wrath

Show more again

In one hand, I remember, he carried a green apple, a small paring knife in the other.

Tim O’Brien -- The Things They Carried

He was hungry, and his meager diet had pared his body down to a feral scrawn of gristle and bone, but he seemed to be in reasonably good health.

Jon Krakauer -- Into the Wild

He’ll undertake to torture any number of cats, if their teeth be drawn and their claws pared.

Emily Bronte -- Wuthering Heights

In any case, let Thisby have clean linen; and let not him that plays the lion pare his nails, for they shall hang out for the lion’s claws.

William Shakespeare -- A Midsummer Night’s Dream

And we’d been a week on the way last night, when up pops a New Moon as thin as a nail-paring, as if we had never stayed no time in the Elvish country.

J.R.R. Tolkien -- The Fellowship of the Ring

Sethe touched the fruit and picked up the paring knife.

Toni Morrison -- Beloved

While Ruana’s hands grew wet and swollen paring apple after apple, she began to say the word in her mind, the one she had avoided for years: divorce.

Alice Sebold -- The Lovely Bones

They simply stopped singing and Reba went on paring her toenails, Hagar threaded and unthreaded her hair, and Pilate swayed like a willow over her stirring.

Toni Morrison -- Song of Solomon

That and the fact my body seems to be completely numb, though to look at me, at the leg that the 60 mph asphalt exfoliant has pared down to the bone, I should be in agony.

Gayle Forman -- If I Stay

A long wallboard hung with cutting instruments which went all the way from paring knives to twohanded cleavers hung beside a four-basin sink.

Stephen King -- The Shining

On it were several paring knives, a corkscrew, an oversized container of sun lotion, and a water bottle.

Rick Riordan -- The Son of Neptune

I took out my knife, opened it, wiped off the blade and pared off the dirty outside surface of the cheese.

Ernest Hemingway -- A Farewell to Arms

It wasn’t hard to pare the list; there were only four homes listed, and he was immediately able to eliminate two of the larger ones since he didn’t need that much room.

Nicholas Sparks -- The Lucky One

On the chopping board in front of her she’s cutting more, with a paring knife, her large hands deft, indifferent.

Margaret Atwood -- The Handmaid’s Tale

"She is currently at K-K-K-Kensington Palace, prep-p-p-paring for-" Hatter snatched up the newspaper and bolted from the apartment, scanning the article as he sprinted in the direction of London.

Frank Beddor -- The Looking Glass Wars

There was the comb I had contrived out of the stumps of the king’s beard, and another of the same materials, but fixed into a paring of her majesty’s thumb-nail, which served for the back.

Jonathan Swift -- Gulliver’s Travels

I am just looking at them: well pared.

James Joyce -- Ulysses

And the little one, with small eyes framed in red eyelids, pared down and slashed up like a thistle head?

Victor Hugo -- The Hunchback of Notre Dame

He began by felling a young ash, cut out six feet of unbranched stem, stripped off the bark and, paring by paring, shaved away the white wood, as old Mitsima had taught him, until he had a stave of his own height, stiff at the thickened centre, lively and quick at the slender tips.

Aldous Huxley -- Brave New World

Now that the last of the rice was gone it was in a sense a relief: no amount of scheming and paring would make it go any further: the last grain had been eaten.

Kamala Markandaya -- Nectar in a Sieve

Perhaps he pared them too like Lady Boyle.

James Joyce -- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Then she set him and the little girls to paring some winter apples; but he was so awkward at this service that she retired him from it and gave him a butcher knife to grind.

Mark Twain -- The Prince and The Pauper

I had rather be any kind o’ thing than a fool: and yet I would not be thee, nuncle: thou hast pared thy wit o’ both sides, and left nothing i’ the middle:—here comes one o’ the parings.

William Shakespeare -- King Lear

One minute she is sitting in front of me paring an apple, and the next minute her head is back on the sofa and her mouth is open in sleep, like a newborn baby.

Joy Kogawa -- Obasan

Its population was not so much thriving upon pared prepared for the arrival of others.

Theodore Dreiser -- Sister Carrie

It was barred off, beginning with the Rue du Pare-Royal.

Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables

Bringing him some apples she insisted upon paring one for him.

Thomas Hardy -- The Mayor of Casterbridge

Outside the window the thin: moon stood upright in a deep sky, like the paring of a finger nail for magic, and against the sky the weather vane of the carrion crow with arrow in mouth pointed its arrow to the south.

T. H. White -- The Once and Future King

She’d done her best to give him a pared-down version of Jocelyn’s tale, mostly hissed under her breath as he’d helped her plow through the crowds to the dais and take her seat there.

Cassandra Clare -- City of Glass

He needed a shave; his fingernails needed paring.

Jhumpa Lahiri -- The Namesake

He cut his trees level and close to the ground, that the sprouts which came up afterward might be more vigorous and a sled might slide over the stumps; and instead of leaving a whole tree to support his corded wood, he would pare it away to a slender stake or splinter which you could break off with your hand at last.

Henry David Thoreau -- Walden

So I took the apple and pared it, and I got the peel off in one piece.

Margaret Atwood -- Alias Grace

More precisely speaking, you have been within half an inch of being pared alive two hundred and ninety-five times.

Thomas Hardy -- Far from the Madding Crowd

Some devils ask but the paring of one’s nail, A rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin, A nut, a cherry-stone; but she, more covetous, Would have a chain.

William Shakespeare -- The Comedy of Errors

When the girls were three feet in front of the boys, Sula reached into her coat pocket and pulled out Eva’s paring knife.

Toni Morrison -- Sula

So while a character might make a sound that creates the words for"pare,"

Lisa See -- Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

She was paring potatoes and looked at him curiously.

Theodore Dreiser -- An American Tragedy

Inter pares.

Saul Bellow -- The Adventures of Augie March

The soldier sat in his pants with the gun between his knees paring his nails and biting off the loose skin.

Graham Greene -- The Power and the Glory

It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked.